


Stucky in Brooklyn

by romeosgirl05



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers Friendship, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Domestic Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Eventual Smut, F/F, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-15 04:48:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29928162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romeosgirl05/pseuds/romeosgirl05
Summary: Basically after Endgame but Steve came back, and he and Bucky move in together and retire from Avenging.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 9
Kudos: 18





	1. did you say your wife?

**Author's Note:**

> Hi y'all! I hope you're ready for a slow-burn Stucky fic, even though I can't write slow-burn! If you don't ship Stucky just don't read if you're gonna be hateful! Disclaimer, there might be light smut, but not for a long time! This is basically me wanting more Stucky than I can currently find. (I like this ship way too much) Enjoy!

James Buchanan Barnes wasn’t prepared for real life. He had been frozen for the past 70-ish years, and had barely become used to life in Wakanda before getting dusted. Now (five years later, according to Steve), he was ready to live quietly and try not to get involved. Of course, that would be hard given that Stark was dead. Steve had been inconsolable. Even though Bucky could tell that they hadn’t really got along, Steve had sobbed on the way home from the funeral. Bucky hadn’t really known what to do. When he was growing up men never cried, and with the women you gave them a kiss and beat up whoever hurt their feelings. But what was Bucky supposed to do? Fistfight Death? And kissing Steve was completely out of the question, no matter how he might feel-

He cut himself off, shaking his head. That was not something he should be thinking about. Men liked women. Women were his only option. But nevermind that. That was weeks ago. Steve had just returned from redistributing the Infinity Stones. He and Bucky were going to be living together. They were pulling up to the home in Brooklyn that Steve had had for a few years at that point, though he rarely got to use it. Steve parked and jumped out of the car, but when Bucky didn’t, he slipped back in and gave him a quizzical look.

“Everything okay Buck?” he asked

Bucky thought for a minute. He could lie and say that everything was fine, but Steve probably wouldn’t believe him. He also didn’t really want to keep secrets from his best friend after being a “Manchurian Candidate” as Stark used to call him, for so long. Completely torn, he glanced around for something, ANYTHING, to distract Steve. Something colorful flashed at the corner of his vision. Without even stopping to think, he pointed at it.

“What’s that Steve?” he asked in a would-be-casual voice as he turned to actually get a look at what he was seeing. It wasn’t what he had expected. A big rainbow flag was fluttering in the wind outside of the house next door. The house itself was covered in climbing roses and ivy that looked exceptionally well cared for, and two women were relaxing on the big stoop with tea, cookies, and what looked like 3 cats piled on top of each other. The women were dressed very differently, one in a long skirt and white button down, and one in black pants and a black tank top, with what looked like a band logo on it. Both had short hair, and the pants-wearing one’s whole head was bright pink. The other one was blonde, but had a bit of green at the tips of her hair.

Steve laughed, “Oh, that’s the Avery’s place,” he explained, “I guess I forgot that today’s the first day of June!”

“So?” Bucky asked, confused. “Why does it matter if it’s June or not?”

Steve gave him a quizzical look, before a look of realisation flashed across his face.

“I’ll explain when we get inside, okay?” he asked, “I’ve actually got to do something real quick. Do you mind getting the bags?”

Bucky shook his head and climbed out of the car. It only took him one trip to get all of the bags onto the front porch, what with his enhanced super-soldier body. After a few minutes of standing on the porch not knowing what to do, he heard a crash from the small shed that was wedged between the houses. Instinct, kicking in, he grabbed for his gun, before realizing that it wasn’t there. He had left all of his weapons with the eye-patch man from SHIELD.

The women had heard the crash too, and were at the shed by the time Bucky had gotten his bearings and run towards the sound. Bucky noticed that the pink haired one had at least three studs in each ear, and a ring in her nose. Just as he was about to greet them, Steve emerged from the shed covered in dust and looking very guilty.

“I’m really sorry-” he started, but the women burst into laughter and didn’t let him finish.

“Every. Damn. Time!” the blonde one choked, clutching her stomach as the other woman howled. “Steve you know you can just ask us, instead of tearing in and knocking everything over!”

“I know, I just didn’t want to bother you!” Steve replied. He was holding a flag like the one hanging from the Avery's house, but this one looked newer and less used.

The pink-haired woman thumped him on the back and grinned.

“Stevie, you gotta grow up and accept that women are just better at entering sheds you have to turn sideways to get into! Now are you gonna introduce us to this handsome fella with the cool arm or do I have to beat it out of you?” she asked, giving Bucky a pointed look. 

“This is my old friend Bucky…” Steve trailed off as he saw the Averys exchange knowing looks. “You know what? Nevermind. Buck, introduce yourself, I’m gonna go put this up.” He grabbed a step ladder that was leaning against the side of the house and headed towards the porch to put up the flag.

Bucky stared at the two women. This was what he wasn’t prepared for! Basic human interaction that didn’t have to do with stopping the destruction of the universe was completely beyond him. Luckily though, the blonde woman stepped up.

“I’m Dani, and this is my wife Jaz. Your name’s Bucky?”

Bucky blinked at her, not really understanding what she was saying.

“Sorry, did you say your wife?”


	2. how was i supposed to know?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little backstory on why Steve is chill with LGBTQ+ even though he's from the 40s. Also slightly vulnerable Bucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi y'all! I'm so glad you enjoyed reading the first chapter! I had some free time in science today, so I wrote this! Sorry if it's a little rough for that reason!

Steve Rodgers was nervous. Nervous about the current state of the world, nervous about his decision to retire, and most of all, he was nervous to live with Bucky. It wasn’t like they had never lived together before, they had grown up basically living at each other's houses, and bunked together in the army. But this was completely different. No mothers interrupting their talks with snacks, no commanding officers giving orders. Here they were free to do whatever they wanted, and Steve was terrified.

As he hooked the Pride flag to the small flagpole on the front of his house, he regretted not telling Bucky about the LGBTQ+ community. Steve himself had been extremely confused when he had come out of the ice and seen a same-sex couple happily walking along holding hands. Completely baffled, he had bullied Hill into teaching him how to use a computer and immediately began researching. As much as he hated to admit it to himself, he had been disgusted at first. But as he did more research, he became aware of how much propaganda he had been exposed to as a man in the 30’s and 40’s. Captain America needed to be a symbol for all Americans. And so he had become what the Averys called an ally.

Thoughts and worries about Bucky clouded his head as he got down from the ladder and trooped around to where he had left Bucky, Dani, and Jaz. He reached them just as Bucky was said, 

“But you’re a woman, women marry men...”

Dani looked shocked for a second before adopting an understanding expression, but Jaz’s whole face turned red and she rounded on Steve.

“Listen buddy, I don’t care what year this idiot’s from, but you’d better explain this to him before I do, and I won’t be nice about it.” she snapped, then she turned around and stormed into her house.

Dani apologized quickly and dashed after her partner, flashing them a quick smile before shutting the door.

“What was that about?” Bucky asked. Steve could see in his eyes that he knew he had said something wrong.

“Come on Buck,” Steve sighed, taking his arm. “I’ll explain.”

The second the door closed behind them, Bucky exploded.

“THIS IS WHAT I WAS WORRIED ABOUT!”

“Huh?” Steve was genuinely confused until he remembered how Bucky had seemed to be about to tell him something in the car. How Bucky had looked so… unsure. Steve had never seen him look that apprehensive about anything. He was Bucky Barnes! Always ready to dive into the next adventure! The brave one.

“THIS!” Bucky was yelling, “BASIC SHIT LIKE THIS!” he took a deep breath and then asked, “How am I supposed to know that two women can marry each other? I need to be told things Steve.”

There it was again, the nervous expression. Steve ignored the jolt that he felt in his stomach when Bucky said his name. Instead, he grabbed Bucky’s shoulders and looked into his eyes.

“Buck, I’m going to explain everything that you need to know as soon as you calm down and get unpacked okay?” he said.

Bucky grumbled and grabbed his bags. Steve led him upstairs to the guest/now his bedroom.

“I’ll leave you to get unpacked.”

Bucky didn’t say anything, but as Steve closed the door, he heard him mutter

“How was I supposed to know?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI, Jaz dealt with a lot of negative reactions to her being gay. That's why she reacted so strongly to Bucky's confusion. (Also light TW for mentions of homophobia in the next chapter!) Thank ya'll so much for reading! I definitely won't normally be able to write this often, but I'm gonna try!


	3. an interesting morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky's first morning as a "normal" guy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wanted to have some fun with Bucky and the modern world. I hope you guys enjoy this!

The next morning, Bucky woke up hungrier than he had been since Hydra. He and Steve had stayed up late discussing things Bucky had missed while frozen, and they had ended up being tired enough to skip dinner. Now, he was determined to prove that he could be a modern man. First: he was going to make breakfast, second: he was going to pick out an outfit that wasn’t made of kevlar, and third: he was going to go and apologize to the Averys.

That was the part he was the most nervous about. Bucky might have been the world’s most deadly assassin, but the look Jaz had given him the day before made him shiver.

But the first step was breakfast. He crept downstairs, not making a sound as he made his way to the kitchen and opened the fridge. He hadn’t had to deal with the rationing of the war, but he was still awed at the sheer amount of food that filled the fridge. He had never had much chance to decide what he wanted to eat, so he was at a loss until he spotted a cardboard tube with metal disks at the ends.

Confused, he took it out and read the instructions. Biscuits! He remembered eating those as a kid. His mother hadn’t made them often, but he had loved them. After looking for a few minutes, he found a metal pan in an odd little drawer under the oven. The package said to use wax paper, but Bucky couldn’t find any, so he took a stick of butter and rubbed it on the pan. 

Now came the difficult part, opening the damn dough. The package said to hit it forcefully on the edge of the counter. Bucky didn’t know how forcefully. He thought for a second, then, deciding that it would probably be hard given that it had been chilled for so long, slammed the tube into the counter of the central island.

There was a loud popping noise and the tube opened up, but Bucky who hadn’t expected the noise, jumped. His head collided with the rack above the island that held all of the pots and pans in the house. The resulting crash could probably have been heard all the way down the street, and naturally woke Steve, who came tearing into the kitchen in his pajama bottoms to find Bucky sitting completely stunned on the kitchen floor with a strainer on his head, surrounded by pots and pans, and one of his hands covered in biscuit dough.

Steve stared for a second and then burst out laughing. Clutching the doorframe to keep himself upright, he gasped

“What the hell happened in here?”

Bucky stared at him for a second and then responded,

“I have no idea.”

Then he started laughing too, and by the time the oven was preheated, they had calmed down just enough for Steve to get the biscuits onto the pan, and Bucky to get the pots off the floor.

Steve put on a pot of coffee, and plopped down at the kitchen table still chuckling. Bucky grabbed the plates and mugs he had found in a cupboard and joined him.

“Sorry…” he said as he passed Steve a fork, not looking at him directly.

“For what Buck?” came the cheery response, “That was way better than any alarm clock, and I haven’t laughed that hard in ages.”

“But I could have broken something-” Bucky trailed off as he saw Steve giving him a stern look.

“James Buchanan Barnes, when have you ever cared if you broke something?” he asked. Bucky could see that he was joking, but before he could stop himself-

“Since I spent 70 years being a weapon of mass destruction.”

Steve stared at him for a second, then he got up and pulled the biscuits out of the oven. As they ate (Bucky marveled at how quickly they had cooked), Steve raised his head and looked directly into Bucky’s eyes. 

“Fair enough.”

After they ate, Steve volunteered to do the dishes saying,

“Go get dressed Buck.”

“Get dressed yourself.” Bucky replied, “Ever heard of a shirt?”

“Ever heard of pants?” Steve shot back without even looking, and Bucky looked down. It seemed incredible that he had managed to go through this entire fiasco in his boxers. If Steve had been facing him just then, he would have seen Bucky Barnes the most flustered he had been since 1943.

Bucky slipped upstairs and rifled through the bags he hadn’t gotten around to unpacking the night before. Sam Wilson had dragged him to a mall earlier that week, and he had picked out some simple things to wear until he got more. He pulled on some unreasonably tight, dark grey jeans that Sam had slipped into the pile at the last minute. Apparently they were fashionable, but Bucky wasn’t so sure. He grabbed the first shirt he saw, a short sleeved pale blue button down. These were not things he would normally wear, but Sam had been adamant that Bucky let him pick out everything.

Bucky’s hair was long enough to tie up at this point. He sort of wanted to get it cut, but at the same time, he liked it the way it was. He grabbed the hair-tie he had stolen from the cupholder in the Stark's car when he and Steve were heading to the funeral, and put his hair halfway up into a small bun. He grabbed a pair of sandals that he wore only because he a: hated shoe shopping, and b: was used to them after spending time in Wakanda. He trooped down the stairs and saw Steve (still shirtless as Bucky was suddenly very aware) give him an odd look. Bucky immediately assumed he had messed up his outfit and looked down hastily.

“I kind of just grabbed what I could find. Did I do something wrong?”

Steve stared for a minute, before responding

“No, I just haven’t seen you in anything modern that wasn’t bullet-proof.”

Then he shook his head lightly, as if coming out of a daze, and asked

“Where are you headed?”

“I wanted to apologize to the women from yesterday, I obviously upset them.”

Steve laughed

“Probably a good idea! They’re really nice, but I’m a little scared of Jaz when she’s angry.”

Bucky chuckled and, with a small wave, headed out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well there goes my naming scheme for these chapters! I hope this was fun!


	4. the not-scary part

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky goes to apologize to Jaz and Dani.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there! Quick thing about my upload schedule: I'm going to post a chapter every Saturday. I might post during the week, but I also might not. Regardless, I will always post on Saturday. Thanks for reading!

Bucky wasn’t sure what to do. He was standing at the Avery’s gate, too scared to go in, but not scared enough to turn back. He knew that he needed to apologize, but he didn’t even know what he would say. Just as he was thinking that he should come back later, the door opened to reveal Dani struggling with a large clay pot that held what looked like a small tree. As she heaved it out the door, Bucky finally opened the gate and began walking up the steps of the house. Dani didn’t seem to see him until he had reached the top, and was now straining to place the pot on the wooden table on the porch. Deciding that it was now or never, Bucky squared his shoulders and spoke up.

“Hi Dani-”

Dani jumped, let out a shriek, and dropped the pot. On instinct, Bucky dove and caught it just before it hit the ground. As he got to his feet, Dani stuck her arm into the pot and retrieved a pair of unreasonably thick glasses, which she placed on her nose.

“Christ, Bucky! Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“Did I?” Bucky asked, confused.

“Yes!” she replied, “I couldn’t see you without my glasses, and you are unbelievably quiet for such a big guy!”

Bucky startled. Without even realizing it, he had snuck onto her property like he was about to kill her. Even though he had thought that she could see him the whole time, he had still scared her. He realized that he had subconsciously stepped lightly, caught the pot not to help her, but to keep anyone from being alerted to his presence. He wasn’t better, no he was still a monster-

“Um… are you good?”

Dani was waving a hand in front of his face.

“Yeah, sorry.” He pulled his mind out of the spiraling mess that was… whatever that was, and looked down at Dani.

She was wearing gardening gloves, a pair of shorts and an oversized t-shirt with the slogan: Plants Are People Too! and looked like she had just woken up. She adjusted her goggle-like spectacles, and grinned up at him.

“I uh- I came to apologize for yesterday.” he said. Dani looked confused for a brief second, then smiled.

“Oh don’t worry about that! You’re from the 40s like Steve right? There’s no way you could have known! I’m sure he filled you in though.”

“But your wife seemed really upset-” Dani nodded.

“Jaz’s parents and friends weren’t very accepting of her when she came out. She doesn’t like people to know about it, but it was bad. That’s why she was so upset about it.”

“But I thought it was ok-”

She cut him off.

“Yeah it’s okay and legal and there’s nothing wrong with it, but people suck. Even my parents were confused at first.”

“Huh.”

“Yup! But I get to live in New York with the love of my life so I’m not too upset about it!”

She pulled a bag from under the table, and began dumping dirt around the base of the tree. As she patted the dirt down with her hands, Bucky leaned against the railing in what he hoped was a friendly and casual way.

“I was actually wondering if you could explain more about your community to me. Steve covered the basics, but he said he didn’t know a lot about it.”

Dani beamed at him. Bucky was slightly taken aback at the sheer waves of positivity that rolled off of her as she stashed the dirt back under the table and wiped her brow.

“I knew you were cool! You’ll want to talk to Jaz about that sort of thing though. She’s actually got a graduate degree in Gender and LGBT Studies! If you carry this big-ass tree inside for me, I can go grab her!”

Bucky thought for a second, and then, realizing that it would be easier to apologize to Jaz if he was also trying to learn more about what she was mad at him for, nodded.

“Sweet!” Dani grinned as she pulled off her gloves and grabbed a pink watering can.

“You’ll be able to see where the tree goes! Leave your sandals on the mat inside please!” she called over her shoulder as she dashed up the stairs.

Bucky grabbed the (light for him) plant and, slipping his shoes off inside the door, looked around. The walls were papered with a dark floral print, and every surface seemed to be covered in either books, or plants. Dani had been right, he was able to tell where the tree went. It looked as though the two women had piled books around the bigger pots on the floor when they ran out of space on their end table. Bucky set the plant down, careful not to shift anything and stood up to see Dani bouncing back down the stairs. She was now wearing a long skirt with suspenders over the same t-shirt, and her glasses were nowhere to be seen.

“Come on!” she chirped, and led him through to the kitchen. The floorplan of the house was identical to Steve’s, so Bucky knew where to go. However, the Avery’s house felt more homey. Bucky supposed that was Dani’s doing, as she told him to sit down, and began to flit around the kitchen watering her plants.

“Jaz’ll be right down!” She told him as she collapsed into the chair across from him. “She’s working on her new project for Pride!”

Bucky gave her a small smile, barely hearing a word she was saying.

This was the scary part.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI, I will be doing a lot of research for the next chapter. As a part of the LGBTQ+ community, I want to make sure I get as much fact in there as possible. The next chapter is mainly going to be about Jaz educating Bucky, and since she has a graduate degree in this, I want to do all I can to slap Buck with knowledge! This is a Stucky fic, but I want to bring as much education into this as possible! (Plus I want to improve my own writing and researching skills!)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Not sure when I'll be able to write again, but I will not just drop of the face of the Earth! Please comment anything you think I could improve on!


End file.
